Chapter 418: Five Hundred Uninvited Guests

"Those devils burned our village to the ground!"

"My lord, please avenge my daughter!"

The refugees who had escaped by the skin of their teeth testified that several villages in southern Essenbach had been raided by bandits claiming to be mercenaries. What was the Billingen family doing while all this chaos unfolded?

"Unbelievable. They scheme to seize someone else’s city, yet they can’t even protect their own territory. Is the Count of Essenbach’s heir so incompetent that he can’t handle something like this?"

The Billingen family’s response was a bigger mess than I’d expected.

And messengers from the units patrolling the border came pouring in.

"My lord! Some of the refugees have crossed the border!"

"Take them all in. Don’t let a single one freeze to death."

The people of Vintenheim trembled with anxiety, but with their lord personally leading troops in to reassure them, there was hardly any unrest. Construction was proceeding on schedule, and Viktor would be joining soon as well.

The Count of Essenbach would be furious when he heard this news.

At his advanced age, I’d count it lucky if his blood pressure didn’t spike.

It seemed the count had deliberately stayed away so his heir could build a track record, but that heir had bungled the territory so badly that refugees were now crossing into Vintenheim to rely on me.

Naturally, I gave the poor refugees every kind of support, winning their hearts, and allowed them to stay until Essenbach stabilized. They praised me for such generosity.

Once things settled down, I would bill the Count of Essenbach for every last expense.

Perhaps thanks to the trait, the people of Vintenheim didn’t exactly welcome the refugees, but they didn’t persecute them either. With outside construction workers coming and going so often, the townsfolk had grown indifferent to strangers.

All of this was possible because public order had stabilized.

Anton’s tireless efforts had brought the crime rate down significantly.

At a time when every extra person counted, I wanted to settle them permanently, but that could become a diplomatic issue, so I held back. Instead, I hired those who wished to work as construction laborers. They’d need income one way or another.

Leonardo and Markus, hard at work, routinely stayed up all night together on the city design. Even when I told them to take it easy or they’d wear themselves out, they simply wouldn’t listen.

"It’s like looking at a walking corpse. Man, you’ll die at this rate!"

"Heh heh heh, I’ll sleep all I want once the city design is finished."

"How is it that not a single artist I know is normal?"

Hieronymus van Aachen, the Brabant painter whose madness showed itself whenever he painted hellscapes, and Leonardo da Empoli, who poured his very soul into city design, both seemed like lunatics.

To the point where our girl in white looked normal by comparison.

Markus, at least, fell within the range of normal.

Markus, in the middle of building the saltpeter farm, asked for my understanding.

"I’ve been coordinating with the administrator to source materials from Rosenheim as much as possible, but for premium materials, we have no choice but to order through Breisburg, so please understand that."

"It’s a shame our foundation is still too thin to supply all the building materials ourselves."

In the end, it was a problem time would solve. My plan was to lay roads across the territory, install the related infrastructure, then invest in robust transport and basic industry so I could sell all of Rosenheim’s products in Breisburg.

Strasbourg, Mainz, and the Swiss Confederation would be my competitors, but I was confident I could beat them all. Setting aside 5,000 points for medical service, I poured the remaining 15,000 points into the quality passive.

So the Streit family’s industry sector now stood at Production 20%, Quality 20%. 15,000 points had been enough to reach level 2, but level 3 onward required 20,000, so I stopped there.

"I knew managing a territory wouldn’t be easy, but experiencing it firsthand is beyond anything I imagined. Even in this small village, all sorts of problems erupt at once."

Beort, kept busy by his days as estate manager, aired his grievances over a meal with me. Listening to your subordinates’ complaints and troubles is one of the virtues of a good superior.

Beort had wanted so badly to rise in the world, but now that he had, he must have felt keenly that it was no easy thing. The higher you climb, the more likely you are to be crushed under the weight of responsibility and duty.

"Now you understand the difficulties of a lord who governs all of Rosenheim?"

"I respect you, my lord. Winning the hearts of the people is truly difficult."

"A good policy alone isn’t a cure-all. If you work out what they need most and solve those things one by one, the people will come to trust and rely on you."

The abolition of the marriage tax, in particular, had won overwhelming support from young people who couldn’t easily afford to marry. Opinion was divided on the pregnancy support policy, but the heads of households welcomed it warmly.

They had strongly objected when the ban on hard labor for pregnant women stood on its own, but once subsidies were provided to households with pregnant women, those objections vanished. Beort listened attentively to my advice.

"Any policy is bound to split people into supporters and opponents. Someone’s gain always means someone else’s loss. Who loses the most from the policies I’ve implemented?"

"...You do, my lord. But I still don’t understand why you give so much at a loss to yourself."

It was expected for a lord to govern well for his people, but not to look after them at his own expense. Beort, a "sensible" noble of this era, said he found my behavior hard to understand.

"I’m a very wealthy lord, so I enjoy giving to my people. That’s how I’ll climb the stairway to heaven later. Think of it as giving alms to a beggar."

"Ah! So that’s what you meant!"

Only then did Beort seem to understand why I liked giving. Tie something to religion and it becomes a justification in itself. The custom of giving alms to beggars arose precisely to set foot on the stairway to heaven.

Christianity widely teaches that charity is the shortcut to climbing the stairway to heaven. So it’s no exaggeration to say that most welfare policies for the poor originated with Christianity.

A truly wonderful and noble ideal.

But the Church of today was steeped in secularism, aid for the poor was dwindling, and this was an era when the pope, obsessed with selling indulgences and launching crusades, was degenerating into a secular monarch.

"Setting the broad direction is my job, so you just need to govern Vintenheim smoothly. That’s the path to fulfilling your duty, which I’ve always emphasized."

"My duty as estate manager? I’ll keep it firmly in mind."

"But it worries me that there are fools next door who have failed to fulfill theirs."

The heir of the Billingen family, which governed Essenbach, deserved blame for failing in his duty no matter how you looked at it. Fried of Euznirk had at least the basics down, but Billingen apparently didn’t.

[Warning! An unaffiliated mercenary company is approaching Vintenheim. Warning!]

The alert popped up while I was watching the gunners and pikemen run coordination drills. Of all the alerts, this was the one I didn’t want to see. With the Battle of Feuzen still fresh in my mind, my heart sank before I could stop it.

"Anton! Send scouts to the border! Sir Beort! Issue a mobilization order this instant!"

My sudden orders plunged Vintenheim into tension. Anton hastily dispatched a reconnaissance unit to the border, and Beort issued his first mobilization order.

"Wh-what? Why the sudden mobilization? Has war broken out?"

"Oh, damn it! I forgot where I stored my spear and armor!"

"Waaah! Daddy! I’m scared!"

"Oh, Armin! Don’t be afraid, the lord has come."

"Really? We’re not going to die?"

"Of course not! The lord will protect our family."

"Move! It’s the lord’s solemn command! Hurry!"

It was pure pandemonium. Oscar and Peter had assembled the company too and were watching me with tense eyes. The mobilization order came without warning, but thanks to the efforts of Beort and the officials, the men gathered remarkably quickly.

Just as essential was the swift cooperation of the people, whose faith in me was unshakable. Anyone would hesitate to march onto a battlefield where they might die. But my reputation outweighed all of that.

"Beort, command the levies and build up Vintenheim’s defenses. The Gale Knights, the Streit Gunners, and the duchy army pikemen will hunt down those who dared to enter the wolf’s territory."

The undertrained levies were assigned the role of Vintenheim’s last line of defense. The remaining forces would advance north with me to wipe out the morons who dared invade Vintenheim.

"Anton, hasn’t the reconnaissance unit returned yet?"

"Not yet."

Just then, the scouts returned. Their faces were flushed red, as if they’d galloped back without a moment’s rest. They reported spotting a mercenary company that had crossed the Vintenheim border and was slowly advancing this way.

"We estimate roughly 400 to 500 men."

"Hmm, more than I expected."